Direct Ab Work

They will help make your abs stronger, sure. There's nothing *wrong* with doing direct ab work. Some people just prefer not to and feel that compound lifts are sufficient for their own goals.

Benefit for what? If you are regularly doing compounds, then you probably already have strong and great looking abs (although they may not be visible due to high body fat %). If you never get to low enough BF% to reveal your abs, there is not much benefit at all. If your BF% is low enough that your abs are clearly visible, then you can further hypertrophy your abs with a lot of direct volume work. However, abs are slow growers, and they can tolerate a lot of direct work, even daily high volume. If you have time for that, then great, but if you don't have the time, it is a low priority for many people due to the low reward for time invested.

'its a waste of time' is certainly the prevailing attitude around here. I assume the majority of them think of direct ab work as little more then crunches.

crunches, where any out of shape person can easily start doing 100+ reps in a month if not a few weeks. the exercises you are talking about you're never going to hit 100 reps... so even if it is a waste of time (which it isn't), can reach failure in a few exercises in less then 10 min. so at least you aren't wasting much time lol.

I'd do direct work 3 times a week, sometimes I do 4 with 2 sets of days back to back.

like your hands, your abs are in some way involved in virtually every lift, so doing direct work daily would be overkill IMO

keithcw_the_first wrote: »

Yes, I think most people assume I'm talking about banging out 100 crunches. And I guess a lot of people are talking about that. But I'm not.

I would imagine that as long as it's being progressed, there shouldn't be an issue. Kneeling rollouts become standing rollout become decline rollouts become incline rollouts. Etc.

And I also would imagine that working your abs every day would lead to some failed compound lifts if they're over-trained and you can't stabilize the weight.

The progression in itself becomes part of the problem. Abs are stabilizers like calves, and they are used to getting a lot of daily work just from normal moving around. In the past I have tried to focus on progressively working my abs directly, using intense and difficult ab exercises until failure up to 5 days a week. Each time I have tried this, I end up progressing to the point where I am spending so much time working abs, with very little aesthetic results. My abs got slightly stronger, but they became so conditioned that I just needed more and more every week. The abs can take a lot of punishment, but the other muscles I was using indirectly while doing tons of ab work eventually starts cutting into my compound recovery. If you are training primarily for sports or some kind of physical activity, maybe it would make more sense to do a lot of direct ab work.

The "just do compound lifts" advice is usually to newbies who spend too much time trying to target their fatty areas. If you want to get good at bodyweight feats, then obviously you'll need to practice them.

keithcw_the_first wrote: »

Benefit to hypertrophy, I guess. Partially, some of my reach goals include some bodyweight feats like dragon flags.

Isometric exercises like rollouts & L-sits aren't as good for hypertrophy as concentric and especially eccentric movements. A selectorized ab machine is great for that.